‘Soggy Flip Flops (August)’ by Lisa Cradduck
It’s our birthday: The Quietus is ten. Like an addled and enigmatic Queen of England, or now I think about it a bit like Jesus, we don’t have the sort of birthday that you check on a certificate at the town hall. We just have a birthday around this time every year, for as long as seems reasonable, and this year because Luke and John have kept this ship afloat for an entire decade (The Obama years were yet to come! Kings Of Leon and The Tings Tings walked free among us!) we are having a birthday for about a month. Next Friday there’s a whopping great birthday rave with Perc, British Murder Boys, Blacknecks, Nik Void and Manni Dee at Corsica Studios, and before that on Wednesday we’ve got possibly the first ever gig from Gently Tender at the Social, with support from Rubie, and then spanking new beloveds Black Country New Road on the 19th.
Lots of parties, and more to come. Which is great, but we also like to sit quietly alone and listen to Pig Destroyer. So, this edition of Albums (& Tracks) Of The Month is not special in a birthday way but, as always, it includes things to dance to, things to cry to, things to walk down the street with your headphones on singing to, and more plenty more. Happy birthday to us, because we are fucking great, and happy everything to you, because you’re fucking great too.
Albums of the Month
Gabe Gurnsey – Physical
“The first song, ‘Ultra Clear Sound’, opens with a kind of sci-fi version of on-the-beach-in-Ibiza bongos and then, maybe 16 bars in, it opens out so beautifully and you’re in a magic place where Miami Vice, daydreams and townie nightclubs with sticky carpets all mingle together in a warm bath of fantasy and silliness and slinky-hip dancing and a direct line between your pelvis and your giddy imagination.” Anna Wood
Pig Destroyer – Head Cage
“Pig Destroyer never really bought in to the globally minded ‘anti’ politics of grindcore’s originators. Instead they sought out a horrifying perspective on the dangers of the male psyche. But writing that “semen tastes like gunmetal”, and about “twinkling bits of glass stuck in her face”, gets old… Head Cage moves them into the middle of the 21st-century culture wars.” Dan Franklin
The Yossarians – Ambition Will Eat Itself
“This whole record is 17 minutes long, and within that time The Yossarians offer a richness, depth and intensity that it’d take many of their contemporaries a whole career to achieve.” Patrick Clarke
Nicki Minaj – Queen
“Messy, powerful, funny, sexy, and packed with supreme skills: this album is everything it should be. The tyranny of looking for approval is cast off, and Nicki shows us what resilience, style and fuck you sound like.” Anna Wood
Alexander Tucker – Don’t Look Away
“Tucker has the preternatural focus of the truly psychedelic, a clarity of vision derived from looking deep within. Don’t Look Away is full of songs that are simultaneously personal and universal, beautiful and exceedingly trippy.” Tom Bolton
Blood Orange – Negro Swan
The intertextuality that swirls around in these experimental and expressive compositions is expansive; Hynes’ mind is a radio. ‘Out of Your League’ sounds like a deconstructed fusion of Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ and Cameo’s ‘Word Up’. But it is his experimentation with the power of voice that brings sensual and soulful depth – androgynous, queer and feminine voices develop layers of emotional expression to beautifully expand and echo the instrumental compositions.” Sophie Brown
Anna Calvi – Hunter
“Calvi’s sound is richly cinematic – you can see the light playing on the water in the shimmering harp sounds of ‘Swimming Pool’, and the windscreen wipers in the racing urgency of ‘Wish’, as if driving breakneck through a downpour in the throes of an all-consuming obsession.” Sophie Brown
Monoganon – Visitations 0101
John B McKenna, aka excellent experimental Scottish-Swedish bloke, aka Monoganon, spent a week in Pictish Trail’s fancy bothy on the Isle of Eigg last summer, and he made a song every day. The results are a satisfying reminder of the kinship between British wilderness, rave culture and beautiful wrongness; they’re available on vinyl and via subscription. There’s a podcast, too – find out more and sign up here.
Szun Waves – New Hymn To Freedom
“There’s a constant tension between order and chaos on this record, but then the practice of improvisation – all six of the album’s tracks were made in one take, without any editing or overdubbing – is itself a nebulous thing, playing on this precise tension between order and chaos.”
Tracks Of The Month
Marie Davidson – ‘So Right’
Shimmering Italo/Chicago house-y track, the first taste of her upcoming album on Ninja Tune.
$hit & $hine – ‘Yeah, I’m On Acid’
Does what you want it to do, very satisfyingly, with extra squelch and a thick seam of Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
Planningtorock – ‘Transome’
Brand new electronic sexy funny cute beautiful joy from Bolton’s finest.
Neneh Cherry – ‘Shot Gun Shack’
The slow sassy lead track from the album that’s out in October, all righteous elegance just like Cherry herself.
Alice Coltrane – ‘Spiritual Eternal’
First track on the re-released Warner albums – out next week. You won’t find a better piece of music, anywhere, ever.
Golden Dwarves – ‘Fine’
Just a guy making music on his own in Cape Town. Sometimes someone sends us an email out of the blue with a link to their stuff and we really like it.
VTSS – ‘Fruition’
VTSS takes industrial techno to more introspective climes on the first cut from her new EP, which launches Berlin-based SPFDJ’s Intrepid Skin label.
Aphex Twin – ‘T69 Collapse’
Bit hectic, not messing about, quality.
